


Stars at Night to Guide Us

by iridiumring92



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Secret Relationship, Sneaking Out, Stargazing, noct and ignis are high school students
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-08
Updated: 2018-02-08
Packaged: 2019-03-15 13:24:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13614258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iridiumring92/pseuds/iridiumring92
Summary: "Ignis, do you ever remember a life before?"





	Stars at Night to Guide Us

**Author's Note:**

> _"When the night was full of terrors_  
>  _And you eyes were filled with tears_  
>  _When you had not touched me yet_  
>  _Take me back to the night we met"_  
>  \- Lord Huron
> 
> _"But if you close your eyes, does it almost feel like nothing's changed at all?"_  
>  \- Bastille
> 
> Title inspiration from [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bD20ag6LD8) song.
> 
> For Ignoct Week 2018: "Reincarnation AU."

Noctis felt the cool grass beneath his bare feet as he looked up to the sky, inky blue with a canvas of stars spattered across it. Out here during the summer, the stars were brighter and denser, filling the sky. Here, they were beautiful. They were barely visible in the city.

He turned to face Ignis, to look into his eyes, yet another thing he was starved for everywhere else. Ignis, with his soft brown hair falling across his forehead, his vivid green eyes, the glasses that Noctis often pulled away when he wanted to kiss him. His lips, always warm and forgiving and familiar to Noctis. His body, long and lean and strong. Ignis’s arms went around Noctis’s waist, and Noctis buried his face in Ignis’s T-shirt, breathing him in. When was the last time they had been this close? “I’m never letting you go again,” he whispered, tightening his hold on Ignis.

“I’m afraid that would be rather inconvenient for both of us,” Ignis replied, and Noctis looked up to see that he was smiling, just a little bit. A joke, then. They’d been seeing each other this long, yet Noctis still had trouble parsing out the moments when Ignis was joking and when he wasn’t. Moments like this in particular. He could have very well been serious.

But Noctis was getting used to Ignis’s particular dry humor, and appreciating it a little more every time. “Yeah, maybe,” he agreed, “but that doesn’t have to stop me from trying.”

Ignis stroked Noctis’s hair, smoothing it down in a troublesome spot. “You should at least try to wear a color besides black, so I don’t lose you in the shadows.”

“I thought you liked how I look in black.”

A huff of breath, a quiet laugh. “Well . . . yes. I do.”

Noctis finally pulled back from him, allowing him to bend down and pick up the rolled-up blanket they’d dropped. He carried it to another place in the grass and lay it out there. Noctis took his hand, and they lay back together, watching the stars.

After barely a moment, Noctis moved in close, resting his head on Ignis’s shoulder. He could feel Ignis breathing, feel his chest rising and falling, feel each exhale stir strands of his hair, and he was certain that if he turned his head to the side, he’d be able to hear Ignis’s heartbeat.

To everyone but the two of them, these meetings were a secret. Ignis was eighteen, already a senior in high school, two years ahead of Noctis. They attended the same school, one of the reasons that Ignis wanted to keep things quiet: he worried that people would think Noctis was using him. And so they met after dark, in this quiet open field, to sit together and kiss and admire each other and the sky.

Noctis lay still, mapping out the constellations that Ignis had shown him on a few previous occasions. He pointed one out. He felt Ignis nod, and then the low vibration of his voice as he pointed out more of them, one after another. Minutes later, Noctis found himself drifting toward sleep, lulled there by the warmth of the air around them, the warmth of Ignis’s body, and the soft, faraway light of the stars.

An image flashed behind his eyes, one of shining swords spearing toward him, and of a man with a scarred face.

Noctis jolted upright with a gasp. He felt Ignis sit up after him, the warmth of his chest meeting Noctis’s back, arms sliding around him.

“Are you all right?” Ignis asked in a half whisper.

Noctis swallowed hard. “Yeah,” he said. “It’s just . . .” He trailed off, and let out a breath. Slowly, he pulled away from Ignis and lay down on his side. When Ignis lay beside him, they were facing each other, and he could see the planes of Ignis’s face illuminated in the scarce light. He wanted to reach out, to brush his thumb across a cheekbone or lower lip. Instead he kept his hands close, brought loosely together near his chest.

“Ignis, do you ever remember a life before?”

Ignis blinked, his mouth tightening. “What do you mean?”

“Sometimes,” Noctis whispered, feeling as if the words were burning his throat, “I have these dreams about . . . things. Things that feel like they’ve happened to me, even though they haven’t. At least, not here. And . . .”

“And what, Noct?” Ignis’s lips barely moved as he spoke, his words barely stirred the air. A chill went down Noctis’s spine.

“I see someone who looks like you,” Noctis said, and he realized too late that his eyes were welling up. “But his face is . . .” He couldn’t say _scarred_ , not with Ignis right there, even though he always had the feeling that his dreams were echoes of a time that had already passed. “Different.”

Ignis whispered his name, and moments later, he pulled Noctis close, wiping the tears from his cheeks.

“Yes,” he said, finally answering Noctis’s first question. His voice was aching. “And when I remember, I _feel_ it. My chest—hurts. So much. I feel that—in the past, I lost someone very close to me.”

Noctis pressed his face into Ignis’s chest again, focused on the way Ignis breathed. One of his hands moved across Noctis’s back. Somehow, though neither of them spoke, an understanding passed between them, tangled together, their gazes turned away from the stars.

“I wonder what it was like,” Noctis breathed. “Meeting the first time.”

“I imagine,” Ignis said, “that it was much like when we met. Here. The weightlessness and the way time stopped. And the knowing.”

“That’s how you felt?” Noctis couldn’t help but smile, angling his head up. The day they’d met, the moment they’d looked at one another, Noctis had felt his breath stop in his chest. Had lost all sense of his surroundings. Had felt as if he were falling. And he actually _had_ fallen, in more ways than one. Seconds after he’d begun to move toward Ignis, he’d tripped over a chair—his friends had never let that one go. And, of course, in time, he’d fallen in love with Ignis.

“That’s how I felt,” Ignis confirmed, his voice soft. “When I saw you fall, I thought I felt it in my chest, too, as if someone had hit me.”

“And you helped me up,” Noctis said, half remembering and half reminding. “But where do you think we were? How old were we? How did it happen?”

Ignis closed his eyes, breathed in deep. “I think we were younger,” he said. “I think we were introduced when we were small. But I think I fell in love with you much later, and on the day I realized it, I felt . . . weightless. Helpless. And like I wanted to protect you from everything I could. But that wasn’t, in fact, everything.” His hand traced a slow path from Noctis’s hip to his shoulder.

“I think you’re right.” With every word that Ignis had spoken, Noctis had felt the truth of it, resounding through his heart, his chest, his bones. It was the strangest thing, knowing you had been someone else at some point, and yet knowing that you were still the same, and dreaming of that life, which stood now maybe a thousand miles, maybe a thousand years away. “Do you think everyone remembers things like this?”

“I believe some people do and keep it to themselves,” Ignis said. “It’s not as if we can ever really be sure. And it—it stings a bit, too, knowing the things you do about what happened in the past.”

Noctis murmured a reply, wordless but agreeing. For a while, they were silent, listening to each other’s breathing. Noctis got lost in his own thoughts, wondering how much he didn’t know about his life before despite the dreams he’d had.

“Come here, Noct,” Ignis said at last, rolling onto his back and patting the space next to him. Noctis returned to that space, fitting his body to Ignis’s, carefully wiping his eyes.

Ignis turned to whisper into Noctis’s ear. “I’m glad we’re together now.”

“I’m never letting you go,” Noctis said.

Lying there with Ignis, he thought, somehow, that they had been here before, watching the stars, wondering what plans the heavens had for them.


End file.
